Polyphasic Sleep: Days 2-3

The following are significant changes, experiences, and
thoughts in my Polyphasic Sleep trial from afternoon on Day 2 to dawn on
Day 4.

I followed the same 8-nap schedule on both days, sleeping
for 20 minutes each at 1 AM, 3 AM, 5 AM, 7 AM, 9 AM, 1 PM, 5 PM, and 9 PM. This
adds up to 2 hours and 40 minutes of sleep and a total of 5 hours and 20
minutes of sleep in a 48-hour period.

Cold Reduction(sort of)

Nights are colder than days, and the second night was not as
cold as the first. I wore a jacket and pants for most of today but I think it
was more for comfort than warmth.

For night #3 (the technical start of day #4) I was concerned
that wrapping myself in a blanket would make me sleepy but this hasn’t been an
issue at all. I think night #3 was colder than night #2, since this is the
first time I’ve wanted a blanket while awake.

Vividness
Reduction

A lot of the weirdness (e.g. vivid, creepy images) I
experienced on Day 1 and early on Day 2 have vanished. I like to think this was
the “hazing” period: I made it clear that I would go through with this no
matter how wacky it gets, so they (they being my Frat-Overlords) laid off and
said, “Fine, you’re in.” J

In addition to sleep no longer being a spooky adventure, my
dreams have not been nearly as vivid, though they still are easier to remember
than on monophasic sleep. I think it will be easier to become lucid on
polyphasic than monophasic sleep, but I have yet to find out.

I did, however, have one instance of eeriness today. After
getting comfortable I thought to myself, as I have at each nap, “Okay, sleep
now.” When I did that a chill came over my whole body and I think I had
butterflies in my stomach. I opened my eyes, relaxed for a moment, and then I
fell asleep okay.

REM Sleep?

Speaking of dreams, I’m not sure I’ve had too many of them.
I noticed this after Day 3’s 5 AM nap: where
are the dreams? Considering that almost all of the sleep on this schedule is
supposed to be Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, AKA dreaming, this was a tad
alarming. So I went into the 7 AM nap firm about having a dream, and I did.
Maybe I’ve caught several minutes of REM sleep here and there since then,
though I don’t recall any dreams.

Short-term
memory lapses.

Speaking of recall, my memory has been, well, interesting
for the last several days. Particularly, when I wake up from naps I often am
confused and/or astonished. Where am I?
What’s happening? How did I get here? Are you sure I slept? I usually can’t
recall having fallen asleep. Several times I’ve woken up five minutes into a
nap worried that I overslept or took an unplanned nap. Even after I check the
clock and see that I already have slept or should still be sleeping I am
skeptical.

What’s particularly confusing is that I’m not so sure
whether my alarm always goes off. For my last nap (night #3, 3 AM) it seemed
like I woke up on time without it but I also remembered waking up to it just
prior to that, so I have no idea what happened. After a moment’s consideration
I tend to conclude with, “Sure, I guess I slept” and then I stand up and go
about my business.

Issues with memory are most potent immediately following a
nap, though I’ve had them at all points in the day. I went for a walk earlier,
and when I asked myself What time did I
leave? I felt a hole in my mind. I was completely blank. I had no clue. This
bothered me at first, but then I wondered if my mind is letting go of such object-based,
largely unimportant details in order to make room for all the novel information
I’m now absorbing constantly. Do I really need to know precisely when I left
for a walk? In the face of overhauling my lifestyle for a month, I don’t think
so.

Choosing to fall
asleep, and falling asleep quickly.

I have a sense, when I lay down, that it is totally in my
hands whether and when I fall asleep. This is completely novel to me. I don’t
think I’ve ever been able to say, “Okay, let’s sleep now,” feel my body relax,
and be asleep within 2 minutes (sometimes less). I’m still getting comfortable
with this: sometimes it’s a little eerie to see and feel myself be swallowed up
by darkness (which is usually the case—especially if I have trouble falling
asleep), but when it works quickly it works wonderfully.

Especially if I actually fall 100% asleep during them (which
I don’t always yet), naps feel incredibly long. When I wake up I expect to see
that hours have passed, though only 20 minutes have. I suppose this is better
than its opposite (i.e. sense that I have slept very little).

Activities that make
it easy to stay awake vs those that don’t: it matters in the moment.

Oh, how lovely the difference! During night #2, which is
also the start of day #3, I struggled a bit. I couldn’t bring myself to write
anything, which is what I planned to do all night. I felt bad about this but I
allowed myself to try other things I felt inclined to do. I read a few articles
on Cracked.com and laughed, which was incredibly relieving. I played
minesweeper for many more hours than I initially realized. At some point I
decided to find the long-untouched crayons in my room and draw, and this was
amazing. I didn’t want to sleep when the time came. I very quickly went from
almost-hopelessly tired to feeling fine.

This led me to realize just how much I repeat the same
activities from one day to the next: it’s far more than I realize. I suppose
the block of 6-10 hours of sleep at the end of each day justifies it somewhat,
since there is always more of an activity to be done tomorrow that I didn’t
finish today.

But now I can spend 10 hours writing and still have 11-12
waking hours left in that technical day. Plus there is no big block that breaks
up activity except maybe for when I eat, so I am able to do the same task
almost nonstop as long as I maintain this sleep schedule.

That, in turn, has prompted me to feel that I ought to try
other activities. In particular, I’ve I don’t do “right-brained,” creative
activities enough, such as drawing, playing music, and perhaps making love (is
that logical? Probably not, right?). I’ve generally let writing serve as both
my right-brained and left-brained outlet, but now I see that it isn’t quite as
bars-off creativity as I thought. Perhaps if I was writing fiction or poetry it
would suffice here, but it’s just a little
too far to the left, like some politicians. Then again, I may just need to
step up my game here. Hm…

I played the viola for 10 years, and it has been a year
since I last played. I’ve been wondering how I might think and work differently
if I were to re-integrate that into my life. Because I started playing music at
8 years old it’s tough to say how it might have seeped into other areas of my
life—it was just always there. So, if I were to start playing regularly again
now I might get to see what can happen.

I’m curious as to see what else 21-22 hours of being awake
each day will reveal to me about myself. This could get deep fast—maybe even
blown to the center of the universe. :)

Anyway, I can also feel myself become significantly more
tired immediately after stopping a task. The message I get from this: even if
you aren’t exhausted, when you task-switch, beware. It’s not efficient, y’know.

I do appreciate this heightened sense of what activity is
right for me at present. It’s not so bad that it could ruin the experiment, but
it is intense indeed. If I’m doing the wrong thing, I’ll know. :)

At one point while playing minesweeper I involuntarily had a
few thoughts that ran in parallel to what I was doing in the game. I basically
told myself a story based on the game. For instance, while deciding which flags
to place around a number 3 the story said something like, “And then Scott gave
three beers to this guy…” These stories seemed to act as some ridiculous form
of reasoning, and I felt I played much better while they were going on. Sadly,
this experience was fleeting, but it was awesome.

Clearer sense of
being in a virtual reality.

The feeling of being a character in a game world (basically subjective
reality) is quickly becoming my default perspective. It’s not that it wasn’t
before, but I had to use more conscious effort to feel it just as strongly as I
do now. I didn’t expect this to happen at all. Maybe it makes sense because
video game characters usually don’t sleep much, if at all.

I’ve also thought that this is like an endless meditation.
Instead of closing my eyes for it, though, I leave them open nearly 24/7. To
know thyself, sleep as little as possible. You shall quickly learn.

Night #2 was tougher
than night #1, but day #3 was far easier than day #2.

After my 1 PM nap on day 2 I was quite silly, and I did very
little that was intellectually or physically stimulating. Aside from a 2.5 hour
walk in the woods after the 5 PM nap this trend remained true basically until
the evening on Day 3, when I wrote about Belief Experiment #7.

I wrote straight through night #1 for a total stretch of
10.5 hours. On night #2 I wrote nothing. I definitely did not want to write about sleep. On night #3, I wrote maybe 40% of
this article. I also could read with no problems, unlike night #2. I am steadily
getting better at using this sleep schedule.

Vision
boost?

When walking home on the afternoon of Day 3 I swear there
was an instance where I looked up at the trees and the sky, blinked, and suddenly
gained perfect vision. I’m not kidding. Right now, however (morning of day 4),
things look nice but they still look just a little nicer with my unused glasses
on.

Polyphasic
Sleep and Ultramarathons, Round 2

I’ve been thinking about what I wrote on this topic in Polyphasic
Sleep, and I’ve basically concluded that, as far as ultramarathons go,
polyphasic sleep would fare best for fairly long-term efforts—say, several
thousand miles— in which the individual chooses solely for himself when he
moves and when he doesn’t. It might also help that the journey is point to
point, rather than in laps or an out-and-back loop.

A prime example of this is to hike (or run) the Appalachian
Trail. I’ve been thinking about traversing the trail in the relatively-near
future, and one of the biggest decisions I’ll have to make is whether I will
hike or run. I know others have successfully run the trail unsupported but I
don’t know much about these attempts—in particular, how big was their pack and how much could they actually run with it on?

That aside, I’ll also have to determine the sleep schedule I
will use for the trip. I definitely didn’t consider that at first. This will largely come down to whether my body
proves it can recover just as well on a polyphasic sleep schedule as on a monophasic
one.

The possible implications of sleep schedule here are huge. Say
I need to allocate an average of 2 hours each day to chores such as preparing
food, securing water, pitching a tent, and getting supplies from towns as
needed. On a monophasic schedule this leaves me with 14 hours in which I can
get a move on. On a polyphasic schedule, I have 20. So let’s say that my body indeed recovers itself well with
frequent naps, and I decide I’m wild enough to move forward for all 20 of those
hours. If my average pace is 3 miles per hour (a leisurely walk—without a pack
which contains your life in it, that
is) I can travel 60 miles per day. Even if it’s a pitiful 2 mph I can travel 40
miles per day. And if it truly is possible to maintain a pace of 5 mph with a
pack and across such a lengthy effort, I could travel 100 miles per day. That
would bring me to the trail’s end in about 22 days.

Maybe I should learn more about the AT before I consider
what’s possible and probable, but
hey, this polyphasic sleeper can dream. :P

The third major decision will be whether I make the trip
alone or with a companion. If I want to run on a polyphasic sleep schedule
there probably won’t be much of a decision to be made here, unless I meet
someone nuttier than I.

Each of these choices comes down to one major decision,
which is whether I’d prefer to go about this quickly or not quite as quick.
Both ways (polyphasic, solitary running vs. monophasic hiking with another
person) have their enjoyable points as well as their separate challenges. I’m
sure I’d have a lot of fun either way. If the physical side is manageable
enough what might be tough about running it alone is that if I’m trying to go
as fast as I can I probably won’t make much time for meeting other people,
which I’m sure is a lovely (though occasionally bothersome) aspect of hiking
the AT.

If I have trouble deciding, I can always traverse the trail
twice. J

Anything Else?

Oh, yes-- I look fantastic. I can hardly look at myself in
the mirror without smiling at myself in pity or feeling my eyes get heavy all
of a sudden. The light shade of brown under my eyes really does look good on
me. Maybe I should stay in the adaptation phase forever so it sticks around.
The same goes to my probably-bloated face.

I have a feeling that attempts at unconventional sleep
schedules are more likely to fail if a log is not kept of when the person
sleeps and wakes up. You have to affirm, in writing, Heck yeah—I’m doin’ it! You have to make it believable to yourself
that this can be and will be done. Keeping records showing that you’ve done it
so far is helpful and possibly crucial to this, especially for those of us who
have trouble believing that we just slept. :)

Finally, to bring all above points together, constipation
has been my pal for three days. May we have a bright future together.